Fishing industry says attacks on monitors rare

NEW BEDFORD — Members of the local fishing industry Monday said assaults by fishermen on the federal monitors who observe the catch are extremely rare.

DON CUDDY

NEW BEDFORD — Members of the local fishing industry Monday said assaults by fishermen on the federal monitors who observe the catch are extremely rare.

The industry members' observation comes in the wake of the Friday assault conviction of Captain Richard Wetherell, 61, from Jamestown, R.I.

Wetherell, who was a captain of the Jessica and Susan out of New Bedford, is now looking at a possible jail sentence after he pleaded guilty Friday in federal court to assaulting and intimidating two monitors assigned to his boat to collect fishing data in July 2010. He is scheduled for sentencing in April.

While commercial fishermen are frequently unhappy with the federal government's role in overseeing their industry, clashes between crew members and the fishery monitors do not happen very often, according to industry members The Standard-Times spoke with.

Fishermen accept that monitors are a requirement of the management system and initial resentment toward them has faded, said Captain Tom Vinagre of the dragger Hustler. "I've had observers on my boats for years and we never had a problem with them," he said.

"The monitors are just young kids with a job to do. We try to make them part of the crew because, once they are on my boat, I'm responsible for their safety," Vinagre said.

Arvidas Poshkus, president of AIS Observers Inc. in New Bedford, said it's "standard industry practice to have observers now."

AIS Observers supplies many of the monitors to the National Marine Fisheries Service and currently employs between 60 and 70 people.

"But we can't pick who we're going to send an observer to," Poshkus said. "Maybe there's a transient captain who's got something against the government and the owner might be unaware of it. But thankfully the number of incidents has been very small."

All observers are trained to deal with hostile situations, Poshkus said, and know they can go to law enforcement if there is a serious problem. "They are out there alone. So we rely on the weight of the federal government behind them. If you have 60 observers, there's always a chance one of them might run into trouble."

Most of the observers are younger, including many women with degrees in marine biology, he said.

"This is one way for them to get into that field," Poshkus said.

Considering the uneasy relationship that exists between commercial fishermen and regulators — particularly in New England in recent years — such incidents are uncommon, according to Eoin Rochford, operations manager for Northern Pelagic Group in New Bedford which processes herring and mackerel. The fishing industry is now accustomed to the presence of monitors, he said.

"Our crews are warned they are breaking their contract and won't get paid if they harass any observers," Rochford said. "It also specifies that they are to help them in any way that is reasonable to get their samples."

While conflicts over personalities or the presence of observers aboard are apparently infrequent, fishermen remain unhappy with other aspects of the observer program.

"I have a problem with them sending green kids out in winter for eight or 10 days," Vinagre said. On his last trip, the monitor (who was from Wisconsin) was going offshore for the first time, he said.

"We're taking 15-foot waves broadside. He's turned yellow and now I'm baby-sitting and trying to get some bread into him," he said.

Rochford also complained that some observers seemed to have difficulty with the formulas used to calculate by-catch in the herring fishery as a percentage of the total catch.

"But really they are the friends of fishermen because they are providing an idea of what's really going on in the ocean," he said.